Head Injuries

by Conrad Williams

  'I'm sorry,' I said. For a change.

  ***

  I stared out those patients who had managed to watch these proceedings until once again we were a ward of ceiling-admirers. Despite my reservations and the circumstances, I felt much better for Mum and Dad's visit and became more chipper by the minute, and was even able to tolerate the appalling hospital radio service. The nurse eventually returned with a cup of tea and a few Jammy Dodgers; the newspaper. 'I could get used to this,' I said as she left.

  I watched the day's colours fade over Sankey Valley Park.

  The sky became banded with purple and blue, even a pale green smudge at the horizon. Over the headphones came something surging and strong, the sudden antithesis to all that afternoon's banality. I was reminded of the sea; its lips of foam, the scoops of gunmetal blue. I imagined myself standing on its scummy shore on a calm, windless morning and taking the first roll of water between my fingers and peeling it back from what should have been its secret depth and acreage but all that lay beneath was the dull sand, broken now and again by a pleading, desiccated arm or a girder of steel; a jumble of plastic; oil blooms. The sea was one molecule thick in my hand, coming away from its shores like cellophane. Nothing moved in the dusty, fetid bowl beneath. The wind took charge, gusting this mirage sheet from my grasp and sailing it into the sky where it hung like a cloud of glass. Something was striding towards me from the newly uncovered skyline, distorted by distance and the great shoulders of land beyond it. Something large and pale. It moved with a purpose which was upsetting; my fear crowded me like a sneeze's threat. It had a noise, this gaining presence: a buzzing, like that of many flies or wasps. Or the hiss of summer rain. I couldn't quite work out which and while I was working on the different nuances I woke up.

  There was a parity between the disorientation I felt at that moment and the times I'd wakened to alien ceilings after one-night stands. A sickening ripple of dread mixed with the compulsion to rise and make good an escape. And a fear of looking to see what kind of creature you've woken up to. Thankfully the panic ended and I slipped my headphones off (the white noise filling the earpieces must have been what I carried into my dream with me) and listened to the somnolent burble of the hospital: the dim rattle of porters' lifts; a schuss of slippered feet on linoleum; the unpleasant, whispery suck of ill people on this ward as they skipped the thin line between sleep and something deeper. If I shifted my head (the pain in my back was strangely disconnected now, as if it too had succumbed to slumber) I could see-painted with a barley glow from a desklamp-the duty nurse for the night shift. A book lay open before her; her head rocked back and to. I could hear the hiss of her nails as they worried a scab on her forearm.

  Someone over in the corner of the ward, untouched by the soft cone of light, sat up sharply in his bed. The lower half of his body, hidden by blankets but offering a little more in the way of illumination, thrashed about as if his bed were full of insects. I knew that he was looking at me; could even see twin crescents of light where the curve of his eyes bulged.

  'Are you in trouble?' I whispered. 'Shall I call the nurse?'

  He raised an arm and pointed at me. Something slipped from beneath the blankets and hit the tiles with a wet smack where it jerked around like a torched worm. A blackness more profound than this mask of night spread across his face and I realised his mouth was yawning silently. It stretched to what must be anatomy's limit then went beyond so that his eyes became concealed. I thought the top of his head must fall away. More objects slid on to the floor. A frothing noise began in his throat. I scrabbled above my head for the emergency alarm button set into the wall and bashed it with my fist. A bell rang and the nurse looked up.

  'Help,' I gasped, as a tide of dark fluid rose placidly from the man's throat and welled over his face.

  Just before he crashed back into his pillow, his body arcing as if a million volts had been passed through it, he gargled my name and then: 'She'll do for you.'

  Bodies stirred around him. Nurses descended. The curtains were pulled around his bed. I listened to the rattling he made and the hushed, urgent voices until dawn brought a pink, strangely safe tinge to the ward. The screens were streaked with blood; I was sure a message was daubed there for my benefit but the light was not potent enough to pick it out. I couldn't keep my eyes away from the hem which brushed at the floor, shivering as bodies moved against it. I was sure something pale and organ-like was going to slither into view, spasming like a slug sprinkled with salt.

  And then the curtains were drawn back and the nurses were sedate and businesslike, taking away bundles of soiled bedding. One of them even managed a smile for me, though her face was grey with fatigue. The man who had suffered the fit was nowhere to be seen.

  ***

  'What,' I asked Olwen, later, 'happened to that bloke over there? I didn't see him leave.'

  I was able to sit up in bed and spoon Bran Rakes without my back twingeing. All down to the anaesthetics and painkillers, of course, but it was nice to delude myself that I was on the mend.

  She looked at the freshly made bed. The curtains had been whisked away, the floor newly scrubbed and all before breakfast. If she'd told me that nothing at all had happened, and that I must have imagined it all, I would have half-believed her, so pristine did the ward now seem. But I'd seen something-not all of which I felt was actual-and I knew some of my neighbours had caught the tail end of this morning's action so I was ready to call foul if she tried to fob me off.

  'Mr Demmings. He had a stroke. I'd like to say it was a good job you were awake to raise the alarm but it was too late-not that we could have helped him anyway. He went like that…' She clicked her fingers.

  'It didn't seem that way to me,' I countered. I didn't tell her about the writhing pieces of him (at least, I thought they were parts of him) or the way his body had appeared to unfold, or the words I heard him say.

  'Well excuse me, Dr Munro. Perhaps you could do the rounds for us this morning.' She said this not without humour. I let it lie, knowing that my mind was likely to be up to mischief thanks to the cocktail of painkillers I'd downed the night before.

  'Sorry. It was just a scary moment, you know?' I thought about the words he'd uttered (or I thought he'd uttered) before all hell broke loose. 'I didn't see him go.'

  'Well, we wheeled him out of here. Even I miss things sometimes,' She gestured to the bowl. 'Finished? Only there's somebody here to see you.'

  'The police?' I asked, trying to get my story right in my head.

  'No. A friend of yours.'

  'Fine,' It would be Dando, come to apologise for the shabby trick he pulled in the night club. 'Hello David. How are you?'

  'I feel good, funnily enough. Like a spangly Cocteau Twins song.'

  Olwen left, but not before raising her eyebrows at me from behind Helen's back. Clearly she was impressed, and so was I, despite my reluctance to have anything to do with her on her terms. Helen's hair was tied savagely into a ponytail, accentuating her square jaw and plump, neat lips. She looked super-real, like an actress. One of my hands she clasped between hers. The skin was cold but soft and generous with its grip. I noticed something was wrong with it though-one of the fingers on her left hand was heavily bandaged.

  'Looks like we've both been in the wars, hey?'

  'Shay too. He went walking in Heysham while he was bazzed out of his gourd on booze and God knows what. Walked over the edge of a sheer drop near Half Moon Bay-'

  'Where?' I sat up and my back had something to say about that.

  'Half Moon Bay. A dingy bit of shoreline. You can see the power plant from there. Why so interested?'

  How could I tell her about Eve? The heartless bastard in me wanted to divulge all, partially because I wanted to hurt her-if she still had any vulnerability regarding me left in her bones. Knowing Helen though, her reaction would involve a hearty congratulations. And she'd ask me if Eve was a good shag. So I kept quiet about her.

  'I'm interested because of Seam
us, not the geography,' And that was mostly true, though once upon a time I'd have cared more about the coarseness of the grains of sand rather than Seamus' well being. 'How is he?'

  'Suffering. He bashed his head in and now he can't see in colour. Seamus and his eyes. Poor dear.'

  'Jesus Christ,' I said. 'And you?'

  Trapped my finger in the door of a taxi. They had to lop the tip of it off in casualty.'

  She related this so impassively that for a second or two I was numb to the gravity of her news. She might have been telling me she had to buy spinach because Asda didn't have any cabbage left.

  'You've had your finger amputated?'

  'Ssh, David. Yes. Just the tip-I've still got my nail. You can hardly tell.'

  'Oh, that's okay then.'

  'Look, David, what's the problem? There's no point in being pissed off after the fact. At least I can still walk around, unlike you and Shay. I'd be really pissed off if I were in your pyjamas.' She smiled and rubbed my hand. What happened?'

  I told her.

  'So you escaped Morecambe for this?' Her face changed a degree: the slightest relaxation of muscles took her from happiness to an expression of anguish. We need you to come back, David. I need you to come back.'

  'And what does that mean exactly?'

  'It means I want you to come back. I want us to be friends. I'm sorry about the way it went the other day' Her lips snapped shut and flattened as though she'd gone too far, which she had, for her. Those weren't the words I wanted to hear but it was nice that Helen apologised: not a common phenomenon.

  Suddenly I was blurting out the incident concerning Mr Demmings and Helen's face became scarred with shock though whether from the urgency of my narrative or the story's content, I couldn't be sure. I knew it would be playing into her hands-all this business of ambiguity and threat she was enveloped in-but it was as if the unconscious part of me that was sympathetic to her beliefs was surfacing, actively seeking a reciprocity of thought with the person I seemed at loggerheads with so often. I declared all-even the parts I could not trust concretely: the colloid ooze of what I'd perceived as dissolved portions of him; the blood's intent on its soft plastic page; his implausibly swift and invisible exit.

  'You'll do yourself a mischief, bottling all of this up.' Victorious, she took my hand. 'Why didn't you tell me you were sensitive? You stubborn fool. It might have saved us a lot of grief.'

  'Oh I doubt it. This doesn't mean I've been cured of my scepticism you know. There are explanations.'

  'Such as?'

  'Well, the drug, the acid or whatever Dando sneaked into my drink. It could still be in my circulation. It could have enhanced this morning's incident.'

  'But you don't wholly believe it did, do you?'

  She was right. There had been a marked reduction in the drug's efficacy since Saturday night and though I still felt groggy, I knew this was more to do with the clean, purposeful medication rather than the bitter dregs of Dando's surprise. 'I suppose not. I'm worried. Even though the nightclub is infamous for this kind of thing I can't help thinking that whoever stabbed me is going to attack me again.'

  'It's getting closer. It knows us now. It's got our blood in its nostrils. Its attacks are going to be more focused. There aren't going to be any more mistakes, any more innocent bystanders taking shrapnel.'

  I squeezed her hand, then put it against my cheek. She appeared a little embarrassed but humoured the liberty I'd taken. She smelled of woodlands.

  'The other day,' I said, inspecting the fluted beauty of her fingers, 'Saturday afternoon-not long after I arrived here, I was looking out of my bedroom window and I saw two figures standing by Seven Arches in the park. I thought it was you and Seamus.' Her slender knuckles waxed as she moved her hand against mine: its wrinkles disappeared, the skin yellowed, her grip tightened. Her face was serene-more so than the way it came to me in dreams when she would allow my mouth to eclipse hers. It surprised me a little, because I'd injected the name of our old haunt with some theatre, in the masochistic hope that it might inspire some kind of reaction in her. That it might cause in her the same resonances that were troubling me so much.

  'No,' she said. 'No. Seamus is in traction and I arrived here this afternoon. Maybe you were projecting what you really wanted to be true. They could be echoes of times past.'

  'Or times to be?'

  In the nod of her head I saw her satisfaction in the way I was assimilating my thoughts with hers. To continue in this vein, though not entirely comfortable to me, might produce a greater understanding of the forces that drove her and Seamus. At least it would deflect any bickering; energy that could be used to more fertile ends.

  She steered the conversation towards safer waters: the state of my back ('Can I see your stitches?'), the health of my family, events in Morecambe.

  'I was walking along Marine Road, near Bubbles leisure centre and a man came out of Woolworth's with his wife and two kids. 'Thirty-two pee for a fucking jellied snake!" he was shouting. "Thirty-fucking-two fucking pee. The robbing bastards!" And he started kicking the windows of Woolworth's in. And the poor kids! They were just waiting for Dad to break this snake in half, calm as you like as if they were used to his tantrums.'

  'Helen. Are you and Seamus still… God, I didn't know how to phrase this… being followed?' I hoped that was okay. With the vocabulary she'd given to this sequence of strange events, I was worried I might have weakened the effect with something so commonly used. Maybe I should have ended the sentence with… suffering an Oppression? but then she'd have accused me of taking the piss.

  'Yes. You?'

  'After I saw you… after I thought I saw you and Seamus by the Arches, I jogged over to have a look. There was something there. I don't remember much, I was scared. But there were a few details. A school tie. A cricket ball. And I could smell petrol. It's a smell that's been following me around for a while, now I think about it.'

  Helen looked lost but at the same time hopeful, like someone who has misplaced a purse and is standing still, trying to remember the last instance she'd seen it.

  'What do we do about it, Helen?'

  'I don't know,' she said. 'We tackle it, I suppose. We face it again. It's getting stronger, bearing down on us with more frequency. It keeps me awake at nights. It's as much from within as without. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's entirely internalised and we're unconsciously providing visuals to enable us to cope with it. Prevent us from going mad.'

  'If we haven't gone mad already. I think you're right. We're dealing with ripples from the past, something we've collectively blocked.'

  She considered this for a moment before nodding. 'For what other reason could the three of us be involved? Our time together was intense-we got hideously drunk, we screwed each other, we grew close due to events outside our cosy little zone but important to each of us as individuals. For example,' she stopped and thought for a while. 'Back when we were kids, do you remember that night we went out to Sankey Valley and we were on the bowling green? You were with Kerry Losh. Daniel Hoth was there. You remember Dando? And Shay. God, I was only thinking about this the other night. You were off with Kerry, kissing her. And I went with the lads down to the edge of the canal. There was a dog-'

  'I remember,' I said. 'I thought about it too. Our heads are letting things through. Stuff they've trapped for years. But the memories are unstable, my mind is being unreliable. It was me I imagined being rammed into the mud by those arseholes, not the poor dog. It's as if my memories are trying to impose some final check, even as they become clear to me. It's as if I'm subconsciously punishing myself. I flailed for a reason but couldn't find one. Why is that?'

  'Because whatever it is we've been blocking, the main thing, it's bad, David.' There were tears in her eyes. So much had happened that we hadn't had time to be frightened. But I felt fear now. I didn't know where this was going to end. Were we all going mental? Were these fouled memories some indication of the decay of our minds and would they continue
for ever, even if we managed to discover their root cause?

  I held her hand. 'It's like eating a packet of Tunes when you have a stuffed nose, Morecambe, isn't it?'

  She smiled. 'It's not Morecambe,' she said. 'It's us.'

  Olwen stood by a trolley of wet towels and indicated to us that it was time for Helen to leave.

  Helen let go of my hand (I had to resist the urge to check the hot skin there for a secret sign she might have left). 'Come back with me,' she murmured.

  'I'll come back soon. Before this week's out. And then we'll all talk together. Tell Seamus… tell Seamus he's a prick.'

  She left then, gliding between the bars of light and shade so slowly that it was as if time was decelerating, that at any moment it would stop and trap her in the block of darkness between windows and I'd never be able to set her free.

  SEVEN

  DESIGNS

  I spent the days leading up to Friday afternoon flanked by magazines and mugs of tea. My meals were brought to me on a tray adorned with a single flower in a stoneware vase. Loot slept with me and played the tart whenever there was a hot plate around. I hugged my mother more in that week than I had done in years and swapped shoulder slaps with Dad like a madman. Kim stopped by often, to drop off a recommended paperback or hand me a warm paper bag filled with croissants. Helen called a few times to check on my recovery and report on Seamus' rehabilitation. Both were swift: I was regaining the suppleness in my back and Seamus was on crutches though his was still a monochrome world. I received a letter from him on the day before my departure.

  'The bones in my leg are crazy-paving,' he wrote. 'And Helen looks like a misty actress in some old film. My few waking moments are filled with brief recognitions of people I do not know, or rather, cannot see-which makes my recognition of them all the more illogical and annoying. My bed resembles a coffin more and more. I swear I can feel my spine crumbling. I've been imagining how my bitchery would read. Pretty small column, I expect. Seamus Cope, twat, died. End of fucking story. I've had two hours' sleep since my accident. And yesterday dear old Jean Crance died, committing suicide at the age of 90. The world of crossword puzzle compilers will miss her greatly.'